Hot Headed! [365.178]

(damn it aperture crashed when uploading and I lost a bunch of text
grrrrr!)Anyways, after seeing a couple of video clips on flickr, I decided to
do a time lapse of a fire burning. This quick shot was at the end of
that process (scroll down for a link to the video).

My initial reaction, aside from surprise, when I learned that flickr
would be adding video, was disappointment. As many have stated,
flickr is a photo sharing community. That's why I like it, for sure!
How might it change if video were added, and why not just post links
to youtube to keep things separate and keep bandwidth for photos?

This got me thinking. What is photography? It seems to me that
photography has always been a fairly dynamic medium. It has changed
steadily with technology since it's beginnings (though not always
necessarily progress). Whether it's origins are light sensitive
chemicals, or CCD sensors, it's a form of expression that can include
collage, superimposition, and other forms of manipulation.

What are the limits of photography? Is HDR photography? Is a
photograph of a drawing photography? Is purely digital art
photography? How much can we alter a photograph and have it still be a
photograph?

What limits should flickr place if any? Well, the pornographic is an
obvious one. Aside from this, should we limit the expression of the
members of flickr? Personally, I follow the photographic explorations
of a number of people, and I'm consistently inspired and amazed by the
care, the patience, and the creativity of these people, and I don't
want to place any limits on them. Certainly there will be tremendous
amounts of careless, uninspired videos uploaded to flickr. But are
there not thousands of careless uninspired photographs as well?
(hopefully this is not overly harsh - I really think people do this
flickr thing for very different reasons).

The most compelling argument against flickr video I've heard relates
to bandwidth. I hope that it won't slow things down too much, and
they will increase resources accordingly. I understand the argument
also for keeping video on youtube and photos on flickr, but is iTunes
worse off for having podcasts, movies, and tv shows? I don't think
so.